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2.3 Policy/environmental relevance

The European Union Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) sets the purpose of the Directive –inter alia- as (Article 1, b) promoting sustainable water use based on a long-term protection of available water resources.

The EU New Circular Economy Action Plan (2020) explicitly address explicitly the water stress and holds provisions for improving resource efficiency in the context of water resources management.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP aims at the production of affordable, safe and good quality food, implementing environmentally sustainable farming, which protects natural resources and landscapes, enhances biodiversity, addresses climate change risks and stimulates the growth of rural communities and economies. Inter alias, the CAP supports investments on water conservation, upgrades of irrigation infrastructure and training of farmers to improve irrigation techniques. This indicator provides information support to the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (CMEF) of the CAP implementation, which is established by the European Commission. CMEF includes different sets of indicators on a range of agricultural issues, such as a set of impact indicators measuring the impact of policy interventions.

In addition, the European Green Deal (EC, 2019) has manifested the focus of the European Commission on decoupling economic growth from resource use, by moving to a clean, circular economy, where resources are used more efficiently and the pressures to the environment are decreased. The Farm to Fork strategy (EC, 2020), which focuses on making food systems more sustainable, is an integral part of the European Green Deal.